The Secret World

[Skwerl]

Have any of you played The Secret World.  I've always been intrigued by the concept, but I've been put off by the fact that it's an MMO. 

I just discovered that virtually the entire game can be played single player, and I'm wondering if anyone has any impressions.

[Yskonyn]

I played it for a good while.

Indeed most of it can be played solo, save for the dungeons and the raids (and the PVP of course).

The story is absolutely great in this game. Many sci-fi and horror themes are presented, but nearly All of them are very well done.
But it takes a lot of quests to get ready for the next part of the main story quest. And despite having left out the concept of quest hubs, it still felt I was running around doing useless stuff often. All while waiting to get stronger to kick off the next main story Quest.

Like I said, there are no Quest hubs in the game. You run a Quest (you can have a finite amount of quests active (generally one of every type)) and once you finish it (by calling it in with your Phone, not by returning to the NPC), you're almost always near a pick-up for a next Quest.
Quests don't have to be run in order so this system makes for a Dynamic experience.
Still, I ultimately found it to have too much sidetracking stuff and I lost my interest.

One thing that I must mention: the Investigation Quests!
Truely spectacular! These quests are long and hard and require you to use your head and often search around for clues to connect the dots yourself. Pen and paper is a must. The devs even created fictional websites on the internet which you find by using Google for example.
The game has a built in browser making these investigations seamless from within the game.
If you can restrain yourself from using spoilers these quests are an absolute joy and very rewarding! A very special experience unlike any other MMO in that regard.

So, yes , TSW is not a typical MMO experience and yes, its story is very good. You still need to be able to enjoy the MMO features of trash questing and running around for big stretches.
If you only want to see the more traditional RPG aspects of it you'll likely get dissapointed.

But AFAIK its free these days? Nothing holding you back to take a peek I'd say. :)

[Nefaro]

I wasn't into the puzzle solving stuff much and ended up just checking the mission guides on the web when something slowed down the pace of the game.

Like Ysky, I also enjoyed the horror/occult/secret-org themes and such.  As far as story and theme go, it's one of the better and more unusual ones regarding MMORPGs.  That's not to say it still isn't an MMO, but it's certainly not another cookie cutter job.  The initial area is superb - like a Lovecraftian Innsmouth with hell breaking loose.  8)

The game mechanics are rather 'Meh' IMO.  Fortunately character building is a mix & match system with a lot of build variety even within the same specialties.  That variety is probably limited on free-to-play and probably requires a monthly sub to unlock (not sure) but at least you can play quite a lot for free to check it out.  O0   

Last I played, the fights started getting pretty tough part of the way into the second zone.  So be aware that you may be dying/running from mobs more than some other MMOs.


Funny that you should mention TSW.  I've begun installing & updating some MMOs in the last few days.  I updated TSW (and GW2) yesterday but have been breaking stuff in Marvel Heroes.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'm not a fan of MMOs but I did enjoy TSW for a few months.  The investigation quests are really well done and very challenging but I think the idea of being able to access Google from in game, while a cool concept, ended up breaking a lot of the investigation quests.  Within a few weeks of the game release Google's ranking systems pushed in-game hints and walkthroughs up to the top of the page for each quest and you'd often get handed the answer right in the little blurb on the search rankings page.

Other than that, it's pretty much your standard MMO.  Go here, kill x number of things, collect y number of items, and bring them to z.  Groups just keep wanting to run the same instanced battles over and over and over again so I usually played solo.  Some of the zones like New England are very cool.  Some like Egypt are not so good. 

[panzerde]

I don't have a ton to add - my experience playing was very much the same as what's already been written above. It's a unique MMO and I loved the secret society/lovecraft mythos/occult parts, and enjoyed the investigation quests.

Unfortunately the FedEx quests and "go kill x of y" stuff broke me. TSW ended up being the last MMO I've played. I ended up feeling that if even an MMO as good and in tune with my interests as TSW ended up feeling grindy and boring for large parts of the game, then I'd probably outgrown MMOs.

But hey, it doesn't cost anything to try it now, and you might find the bits I didn't care for to be perfectly acceptable. Some of the early areas really are stellar.